Universal Music Group announced a partnership with wellbeing firm Thrive Global, founded by media mogul Arianna Huffington. UMG is the exclusive music partner for Thrive’s ‘Reset’ stress management tool, announcing the partnership deal at a conference on music and health co-hosted by both companies.
Now, Thrive Global has another big corporate partner, but this time it’s from the AI world. It’s launching a new ‘AI health coach’ service with OpenAI’s Startup Fund as its lead co-investor.
The launch announcement explained, “Thrive AI Health will use the power of generative AI to hyper-personalize and scale behaviour change across the five key and interconnected daily behaviours that govern our health: sleep, food, fitness, stress management and connection”.
The inclusion of stress management made us wonder if UMG will be involved. Music is not mentioned in the announcement, nor does it crop up in the accompanying op-ed piece for Time Magazine co-authored by Huffington and OpenAI boss Sam Altman.
Music rightsholders are currently laying down the law (or at least, what they hope will become the law) around copyright to companies like OpenAI.
It may thus make sense for music – specifically UMG’s music – to be diplomatically reserved from Thrive Health AI until the picture is clearer on the policy front.
